Sacrifice is Just Part of The Mission
by goddessa39
Summary: The truth about time travel just leaves you with a headache and an effect. Chris has been fully aware of what he was doing. Vignette.


_Wow, two in one day. I guess I'm on a roll…_

Title: **Sacrifice is Just Part of The Mission**

Canon: Charmed

Disclaimer: No, I don't own it.

Genre: Angst

Characters: Chris, etc.

Pairing: Chris/Bianca & Leo/Piper mentions

Timeline: Post Chris-Crossed, but nothing definite.

Summary: The truth about time travel just leaves you with a headache and an effect. Chris had been fully aware of what he had done.

* * *

He was doing it for Wyatt. He did everything for Wyatt. Even when they were growing up, his self-given job was to look after his older brother and clean up his messes. Of course he loves his brother, but the older Halliwell often times did not realize what kind of chaos he caused. 

He'd always had somewhat of a big head, but most of the time he would look back and see what his little brother was doing.

"_Of all the people to betray me…" he says, standing tall and not looking at all like the vindicated victim._

"_I didn't go back to betray you Wyatt. I went back to save you." Chris looks at him and doesn't see the brother he loves. He sees the mess-maker that hadn't yet looked over his shoulder and turned around._

_When he leaves his fiancé is lying on the ground with a broken table leg running through her belly. She's waiting to die and he bitterly thinks that at least now there is no one that will miss him. Morbidly, he thinks that it is a relief she wasn't pregnant as the spike would have killed anything in her womb immediately. He is going to rewrite this place-make it nonexistent for this reality. But still, it would have been nice to know that there was something to come back to._

When they were little, Chris often took the blame for things his brother did. He did it on purpose because Wyatt didn't have a sense of cleanliness. Everywhere he walked there were cakes of mud. Wyatt didn't have sorrow. He just had excitement and the need to get up and run.

Chris had always been the more reserved of the two, on the outside of the family so to speak. His father had always seen him as the trouble maker and had no need to look into anything really. Chris suspected that his mother realized what he had been doing from very young. The boys had always been close and it was Chris that had always followed Wyatt around. It wasn't so he could know everything like his older brother-it was to make sure he was okay.

If there was one thing everybody with a sense (_as Leo had none_) knew about Chris Perry Halliwell, it was that he could enjoy almost anything. Even when he took accelerated classes in school he would love to sit on the couch with his head in his mother's lap and just let her read part of whatever book that currently had her fancy. He'd learned to cook just like his mom and was pretty independent in his magic.

And maybe that was why he felt like he had to stay on his brother's heels. Chris was a solid stone in a river where as Wyatt was a large fish. Wyatt had no ability to stay still for more than a few minutes. Even meals had to be loud family affairs as Wyatt talked loudly.

Chris had been the organizer in the family almost immediately. He could stand a mess-was content to have his bedroom described as a pigsty- but he still had to know where everything was.

He had systematically organized the Book of Shadows by the time he was seven despite the fact that he wasn't supposed to touch the book without someone to watch him. He didn't need to do something bad just because he accidentally read some passage out of the book.

He knew where everything was and had at least one hidden cubby in almost every room where he could store little candies or secrets. So it was no odd scene that he had organized the Resistance out of the dozens of cells of people who did not agree with the new reigning regime. He'd gotten to know every single person willing to help and had taken his time to introduce his own spies into the network Wyatt was slightly trusting.

Throughout the few years the battles between sides fought it out, he'd been organizing materials he could scavenge and saving those that he could. He was the last Halliwell still sane-and he had his doubts about his own sanity often enough-and there was no one he had really trusted. His friends had died early on. He didn't trust the elders and it had been hard enough getting different races to band together and get along. He'd had no time for friends or trustees.

Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it picking up his brother's messes if Wyatt would never turn back and learn from his troubled. He quickly banished those thoughts into the fifty percent of his brain along with his other horrible memories/thoughts and things he would never acknowledge (_What if he had been faster, smarter, stronger? What if?) _-torture, manipulation, death-_Mommy's death_-Melinda's death-the Death of the Halliwell line (_The Event_)…

He'd met Bianca on a raid. He had been barely seventeen (_Wyatt had been nineteen_) and taken a team of nine others and staked out some warehouses by the docks on the downside of San Fran. The thought that his mother would have not approved was quickly dismissed as soon as it entered his brain as Wyatt was different and it had no place in this mission and she was DEAD so she could say nothing about it.

They'd killed over fifteen minions and only lost one with a few minor scars and some wounds when they'd come upon the dungeons. She'd been beaten and tortured and (_beautiful_) half dead when they found her that no one thought she would survive. Chris had taken one look at her and though he couldn't heal, he could feel her emotions and he knew she'd survive. She was strong, defiant, (_deadly_) and true to her ideals not even shared by her coven.

They'd taken her with them after disintegrating and blessing the other bodies. No one dared go against his word despite the fact that he would have been considered a young man not yet an adult in the world before magic became common knowledge (_before the ruins covered the city_) and before… The Event.

He had delivered her to the infirmary in his arms with a single orb from the entrance of the HQ. She was almost dead and he'd had to work on her with some of his mortal medical tools as the whitelighters (_only a few dozen left alive_) were all busy out on missions or healing others before they could get to her.

Chris isn't sure when he fell for her but he had known his feelings by the time she was fully healed and at least trusted him a little. It hadn't been Chris who had wanted her in the spy network of his, but she'd insisted, and what was he to decline her of the chance to work for her revenge-though Wyatt had thought she had finally given in to his regulations.

And then somewhere along the line they'd had a little time for a good meal and a birdsong by the lake and many nights spent in bed under bloody sweat-covered sheets wanting to feel the (_love lust heat magic_) of someone just like them.

Wyatt, Chris reflected, could never see what it was he had. All he cared about now was power.

He had long thought about going back but hadn't truly thought about it until the first time a small army had gotten into HQ and they'd last ten percent of their fighters just trying to protect the innocents like mortals and leprechaun children and faeries. And like in all things he'd researched and brainstormed and thought back to everything he knew. He had meditated and picked apart every little memory he could about his brother.

There seemed to always be something… else… to his brother. Almost like there was something he had forgotten to tell him. Of course, he was two years younger than his beloved older brother once praised as the Twice-Blessed second coming of the great King Arthur.

So something must have happened. But what? Maybe there was a demon who kidnapped him. Maybe Wyatt was just acting in an insane reflection to not be hurt, to control the amount of hurt in the world and scratch those who didn't give him his way. And somewhere along the way Wyatt had lost his little brother and in that his own ideals and the way he saw things. Suddenly everything was just a little bit darker and Wyatt wasn't the Savior-he was the Source who wanted to be the King of the World.

And as he took notes, he filled up notebooks and memorized what he needed. He remembered the stories of his mother and Aunts and what had happened in those times before he was born. He'd sidestepped most of the rules that would have once gotten a white lighter's soul recycled.

And he'd planned everything carefully with no room for mistakes.

The truth about time travel had standard rules. In some cases, some people had to go back in time in order to prevent something from preventing what was supposed to happen. For example, When the Charmed Ones had to go back in time to make sure that Melinda Warren-their direct ancestor-was born.

But he was going back to change the past. In another reality maybe it didn't actually change anything. This future was still a possibility that happened in some reality far, far away. The future taken by his exact past though would be written anew.

And this meant that though he would go back, he still only fit into his own time and place. If he changed any little thing, he had no future. He would not fit in that other world. He would be a double soul. And that would be unacceptable to the very existence of time and space.

He would be writing himself out of a future-basically committing suicide. He would be the sacrificial lamb to insure that his horrible life would no longer exist. He would fade into nothing. And when he succeeded-he was neurotic and had to (_have to do this, have to win this, have to save everybody_) succeed in his mission- he would give a new unwritten life to his brother and his self if he didn't get himself unborn.

There were little touches of realities that kept in contact-little ripples that met in multiple realities while occasionally heading off to somewhere/some-when else in another place and time.

It surprised him somewhat when his mother (_Momma I love you_!) did not recognize him, her eyes filled with mistrust and worry for her son ("_My two handsome boys!")._ It surprised him when the Aunts had no trust in him when they should have known the price for this. He had no want to be a doppelganger-they played hazard with every dimension they were from- and no wish to hurt anyone.

And a part of him was slightly (bitter angry sad) dissapointed that no one could recognize him. He had always been told of the startling resemblance to his mother he had, while his brother favored their father. Not even Grams, their current matriarch recognized him. Only Victor Bennet, who wasn't even a witch or a Halliwell, fondly known as "Grampa" (_days spent on picnics and asking questions and learning about the cameras next to the smell of the cigarettes that would kill him)_ had looked at him and known.

He had been bitter at his father since he was really little and held no lover for Leo before he was his father but sometimes he thought that maybe if he was a little nice now, that the man could forge a new relationship with his other self, his future self, his not-yet-born self.

He wondered why his fam- the Charmed Ones before they were his family- couldn't understand that he did not say "Future Consequences" just because he didn't want them to know anything. And no matter how easy it would be to clear up to confusion of his identity, he couldn't cause his mother more pain by getting close to him-the him that had come back to save everyone. If they knew, they would feel a bond with them and when he ceased to exist they would feel pain. And no matter how bitter he had become over the actions of his brother, he could never cause his family pain.

And he wasn't stupid-wasn't going to risk certain existences and occurrences that just had to happen.

Although, something in him whispered that maybe it would be better if he wasn't born. Maybe if he just ceased to exist, he could escape the pain that seemed to stick to him no matter where he was. But then he would remember Bianca and Wyatt (_Who will watch his back and clean up his messes?)_ and his mother _("There you are, Peanut!")_ and everyone he had loved and laughed with.

So he was determined to keep fighting. He could not fail-would not fail-refused to even think of failing as an option. He. Had. To. Save. Wyatt. But first he had to find out what it was that turned him.

And when he succeeded in saving the world and faded away to wherever the forgotten people who no longer had a place to be went, there would be a new beginning. There would be a new life for two sons of Piper Halliwell and Leo Wyatt. And even though that Christopher Perry Halliwell wouldn't be him because not every little dynamic ripple across dimension would be the same for him, it would still be him.

As for the future, Chris just hoped that the next time he came face to face with his brother Wyatt, the elder brother would not have to look over his shoulder to see what he'd done.

He was just cleaning up his brother's messes. And when it came down to it, Chris knew, it was his place in life.

Chris just hoped that coming back to save Wyatt hadn't been his only purpose. Because then, he knew Wyatt really would be screwed.

He knows what he is doing, knows what it will take. So when he dreams he rarely has nightmares. Instead he dreams of the possibilities where he can marry his only love and make her a mother and be there when she is old and grey and still fighting death every step of the way. He dreams of a place where his father will look at him in the love of a good father and can still look at his wife like he is a shining deity in a black hole.

And he dreams of games of orb-and-seek of two little boys and all of their cousins, peaceful times of a child despite having the danger and grand ancestry of the name "Halliwell" being hung over their head like a beacon that calls trouble.

He was the offering on the shrine to save his brother. And Christopher Perry Halliwell could scream to the heavens that though it wasn't fair he was perfectly willing to lay down his very existence for his brother and to take the blame for his brother's tracks of mud in the house.

* * *

END. 


End file.
